Ice
by Beeezie
Summary: You're too busy trying to survive the storm.


You find the Healers endlessly frustrating.

They just won't stop talking at you. (At you, mind. They're not talking to you.) They keep telling you that you're riding for a fall by throwing yourself so completely into your work. (Particularly, they point out, with a look of mingled distaste and disapproval, when your work is so _stressful._ You're sorry-not-sorry that they don't approve of you fighting monsters to keep the wizarding world safe.)

They tell you that you need to take things slower, that this is no way to recover from your _injuries._ (By injuries, you're quite sure that they don't mean the scars on your face. They mean all the rawness and pain inside your head that came from them.)

That's what bothers you the most. They talk about _recovery_ like it's some pinnacle of inner peace, and they don't seem to understand that maybe inner peace isn't an option. You _know_ that what you're doing won't get you _there_ \- you're fighting acromantulas and kelpies and dementors and even the occasional manticore, for heaven's sake.

(Not werewolves, though. Never werewolves.)

None of that is a recipe for inner peace. You know that. You aren't an idiot.

But maybe you don't need that elusive inner peace that they're always harping on about. Maybe it's something that you just _don't get_ anymore, because life isn't fair and you've got so much inner turmoil you can't imagine clawing your way out of it completely.

Some days are good days. Those days are welcome.

But some days aren't, and very few nights _are_ \- even your best-friend-or-something doesn't make them more than sort of tolerable when she shares your bed, and that doesn't happen very much, both because you don't really want it and because you're sharing her with her husband, and she shares his bed more often.

You're okay with that. It's easier to hold yourself together when you hold yourself a little aloof from everyone, even the people you care about.

(You don't really like the word 'love' anymore. That word has too much power to poke holes in your carefully constructed dam, and once the holes are there, the surge will come. You don't want that. Your best friend understands that, too. If you used it with anyone it would be with her, but you don't.)

Her husband seems okay with it, too. But he was never territorial, and he was always a good friend. He's not gentle like her, but sometimes that's a good thing. You need that, too, and he was the one who convinced you to take this job in the first place. She never would have pushed so hard, but he was the one who was right.

(Maybe you would use that word for him, too, if you used it, though with him it's a different, strictly platonic sort of thing. But you don't. You know that that would break the dam.)

It surprises you how fragile keeping an iron grip on your emotions leaves you. The longer you hold them so tightly in check that there aren't any leaks, the more brittle their jail becomes.

But you can't turn back now.

The Healers don't understand. They want to believe that you can be _cured,_ and they don't understand why you aren't plodding patiently toward that goal.

What they don't understand is that when you're in the midst of a storm, you don't have the luxury to think about a distant future. (When this is your life, the future is pretty depressing, anyway.)

You're too busy trying to survive the storm. And the best way you've found to weather the thunder that courses through your veins and leaves you huddled in the corner of your bedroom unable to function or the lightning that leaves you short-tempered and brusque as it momentarily ignites your mind with so many _thoughts_ is to distract yourself from all the pain and anxiety and inner instability.

Work is the best distraction.

Because what you're doing _matters._ You know it matters. It makes you feel like you've managed to become more than just a waste of space.

(Almost like you're a real person again. You're not, though.)

You need to manage too many inner crises to think about the future. You suspect your emotional state will (on some level) always be crisis after crisis. But sometimes that doesn't seem like the end of the world - managing your issues is better than living in a fantasy world where you pretend they're just going to magically go away.

You don't tell the Healers this, of course. They wouldn't understand, and they'd cluck their tongues and wring their hands (mostly metaphorically, but sometimes literally) and talk about in-treatment options, and you aren't quite confident that they don't have the power to lock you up.

(Again.)

(And there's no way that _that_ would help. The only way you can deal with the voices now is to busy yourself with issues that are of literal life-or-death importance. Without that, where would you be?)

So you pretend that you're doing better than you are and smile and tell them that you understand what they mean, you'll cut back on the hours you're working, and then you leave.

You don't follow through on any of the lies you told them.

There's no point. They just don't understand.

Lucky them.


End file.
